


A Walk in October

by AirplaneFoodBlackMarket



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Contest Entry, Established Relationship, F/M, Halloween, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-War, Themes of unease about the future, There is a reference in-passing to a non-canon murder-suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 12:04:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21035972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirplaneFoodBlackMarket/pseuds/AirplaneFoodBlackMarket
Summary: The end of October has brought a number of things to newlyweds Hermione Granger and Harry Potter's little corner of London: lingering cold, a dreariness to the days, crisp fallen leaves scattered in piles everywhere, and Halloween of course; but also memories of the past, fears for the future, shock and horror and new changes in their lives. In the midst of all this, Harry asks Hermione to accompany him on a journey, but he won't say where. She trusts him implicitly, always has, and would follow him anywhere, no questions asked. So why all the mystery? It's possible he doesn't even know himself. It's also possible there's more that's being hidden between the pair of them.





	A Walk in October

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [HalloweenHarmonyComp2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HalloweenHarmonyComp2019) collection. 

> **Prompt:**  
  
Create a fic that incorporates these 10 random generated words:  
atmosphere  
echo  
percent  
debate  
pasture  
behave  
funny  
choke  
contradiction  
mutual  
  
This piece was written for Harmony & Co’s Halloween Competition, Double Double Toil and Trouble. All canon characters, plots, dialogue, and situations from the Harry Potter series belongs to JK Rowling. I am not profiting from this work. Thank you to my beta for their work on this piece.  


***

The chill of smooth bathroom tile against bare feet was cold comfort to Hermione Granger as she sat, thighs spread a little further than she’d normally consider comfortable, hair falling in uneven curtains around her downturned face, and waited. Outside, a gentle late-morning rain drizzled in lazy pitter-patters against the pane of the small bathroom window, the mottled light casting a haze of shadow raindrops against her bare skin. She turned her gaze toward the window, her chin cradled in her left hand, elbow cutting a divot into the flesh above her knee, and looked out into the dreary London day. A twinge in the pit of her stomach—like the tightening of a knot—brought a grimace to her face, along with a reminder of the queasiness and unease which had led her to call in sick to work for the first time in years that morning and kept her ensconced in bed well after her Harry had kissed her goodbye and departed for the Ministry himself. Reluctantly, she broke from her reverie and glanced down at her other hand, in which she had been absent-mindedly twirling the thin plastic stick of the muggle pregnancy test between her fingers.

She had, of course, read extensively about the device, including every word on the box it came out of. Bits of theory and best practices, the names of indicator chemicals, the minimum functional relative percent of human Chorionic Gonadotropin hormones, pregnancy timelines—countless bits of information ran through her mind. The tiny screen was still blank. None of her reading could change the fact that she had only taken the test a scant few minutes ago. _Results in five to six minutes, guaranteed!_ The box had proclaimed, helpfully. She sighed.

In the back of her mind, Hermione knew that the result the device held for her would only confirm the outcome she already all but knew. She had missed her period well over a week ago, and she was never late. In the intervening time, she had performed a freshly-learned pregnancy diagnosis spell on herself at least five times, with the same positive result each time. This, the spindly piece of plastic in her right hand, was just additional confirmation. No matter how skilled she was at magic, and she was _good_—still the brightest witch of her age if the tabloids were to be believed—some part of her still needed the inexpensive piece of muggle technology to be the final authority on her condition. The irony of this essential contradiction was certainly not lost on her. Maybe it was a holdover from the rom-coms she’d grown up on, or the romance novels she enjoyed so much as a guilty pleasure but would never admit to, wherein the simple plastic stick served as such a pivotal plot device in the lives of these storied heroines. Mostly though, she appreciated the physicality of the thing. She liked the presence of it; liked being able to hold evidence of her own inner workings right in her hand, where it seemed so much more permanent—so much more reliable than some spell. She looked back down, having caught her mind wandering again. An image filled the screen. Two parallel lines. Positive. Ok. No denying it now—Hermione Granger was pregnant.

She stood, feeling almost lightheaded. Despite all the previous positive spell tests, she still felt a measure of relief. A kind of clarity of purpose descended upon her. Now all she needed was more data; now all she had to do was research and prepare—simple—just another new project. But first, a shower. She stretched, relishing the subtle cracking in her spine as she arched her chest toward the ceiling. The end of October had brought nothing but lingering cold and dreary days to London, and this day, Halloween, was shaping up to be much the same. A long stint under the hot water and surrounded by billowing steam would surely siphon the chill of both the day and those porcelain surfaces from her skin.

***

She had wanted to wait to tell Harry until she was absolutely certain. Something about the way it had been so unplanned, so unexpected—she couldn’t really remember when or if she’d failed to take her potion last, nor understand how it could have slipped her mind—and something about the time of year had given her pause. Even now, her multi-day quest to achieve certainty over, Hermione found herself reluctant to send an owl or patronus Harry’s way. This kind of news, she had decided, was best shared in person. That’s what all the books said, too.

So, with the sky outside turning from grey to black and her mind as settled as she could make it, Hermione found herself on the couch by the fire, curled under a heavy blanket with a book propped against her knee and a steaming mug of tea floating lazily nearby, waiting. The hour was growing late and, more importantly, so was Harry. She had long since given up on the debate they’d had when they were newly a couple and desperate to see each other all the time—trying to determine who was to blame for their never arriving home at the same time—and accepted that his Auror work would keep him out late into the night far more often than her liking, especially when they sent him out into the field. She was often just as guilty, staying late at the Ministry working on drafts of new legislation or huddled in late-night meetings with her team, feverishly devising strategies to confront and counteract the still-entrenched pureblood influence within the Wizengamot. She and Harry had taken to indulging in clandestine meetings in the Ministry itself, a practice which carried with it an illicit thrill no matter how heavily warded and silenced Harry’s office walls were.

On this night, as on many nights when Harry was out in the field, she sat and worried as the hours grew late. She rubbed at her eyes absently and tried to concentrate. She had just started re-reading a passage on potential magical complications during the second trimester, for what felt like the third time in as many minutes, when the unmistakable sound of their floo roared to life.

Hermione was on her feet almost instantly. Her heart pounding in her throat and her news tingling on the tip of her tongue, she dashed through the hall and into the great room in time enough to catch her husband roughly brushing soot from his robes. At the sound of her footsteps over the threshold, he looked up, and Hermione caught a glimpse of his face. The words _Harry, you’re going to be a father!_ died on her lips, and somewhere behind her, the mug of tea clattered to the floor.

Harry was pale, his eyes dull and distant rather than sparkling green with life, and the dark circles beneath them made his face appear hollowed out. His hair was a mess, though not in the roguish way Hermione always found so charming, but haphazard, indiscriminately splayed this way and that as if he had repeatedly run agitated hands through it. She might have recoiled in shock at the sight of him had she not recognized the look on his face as the same one he wore so many years ago—when he had turned from her and Ron and walked into the Forbidden Forest to meet Voldemort and his certain death—on the night of the final battle of Hogwarts. Now, as then, she jumped at him, threw her arms around his neck, and breathed him in, if only to reassure herself that he was still real. “Harry… Harry, what is it? What happened?”

A sputtering sigh escaped him in response, and she leaned back, hands clutching at his shoulders, to watch his face. “It’s—nothing. It’s really nothing. Just…” he reached up to run a hand roughly across his scalp. “Just a long day.” He shrugged, and her hands fell to her sides.

Hermione frowned, disbelieving. “Harry, don’t just hide this—whatever this is from me. We can work through it together. I promise.”

“I don’t…” he shook his head, taking a step towards the hall. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long day and I’m tired, that’s all.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but not before he slipped from her side and the room, brushing past her a little carelessly, if not gruffly. She shook her head and followed, stunned into silence more than anything else. Wordlessly, he mounted the stairs at the end of the hall. Hermione passed the shattered remains of her tea mug by the entrance to the den and absently muttered a quick spell to banish the mess away as she darted past, her mind already pre-occupied with running through one explanation after another for what could bring her husband to behave this way.

She caught up with him again in their bedroom, fully expecting to see him flopped face first into their bed and already close to sleep. Instead he stood at its foot, stock still, one hand cupping his chin. She coughed to announce her presence, but he did not react. “Harry?” she tried, desperately hoping to keep the worry already seeping through her mind from inflecting her voice.

He was silent a few moments more. “Can we go somewhere?” he finally said, his voice deadpan, as if he wasn’t even asking a question.

“…Go somewhere?” she repeated, struck suddenly by the thought that he already seemed miles away from her.

“Yeah, I just…” He finally turned towards her. “Sorry, I just don’t think I can be here right now.”

“What’s wrong with here?” She was certain he could hear the worry in her voice by now.

“I don’t… know. Not yet.”

“Harry, what is it? What’s wrong?”

He just shook his head. “It’s… nothing.” He took a step towards her. “Will you come with me?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“You… you trust me, right?” His eyes met hers, and they still seemed distant, not as bright, but with a renewed intensity, almost pleading. She faltered.

“Yes.” She breathed. “Yes, absolutely. To the ends of the earth.” She almost shivered. It was a question, she felt, that almost didn’t require an answer. She trusted him implicitly, had proven that to him so many times before. There was nowhere she wouldn’t follow him.

Harry nodded, took another step towards her, held her tightly by the shoulder, and suddenly their bedroom seemed to swirl about them and vanish.

***

They apparated under cover of near perfect darkness, and landed with a knee-shaking thud that left Hermione clinging to Harry’s arm for balance. She blinked a few times to still the dizziness in her head and clear her vision, but it was to little effect. Even through the dark, she realized they were surrounded by a swirling dense fog. She glanced towards Harry, the ghost of a question on her lips, but he wasn’t looking at her. His gaze lay fixed straight ahead, and she followed it, finally seeing further through the mist as her eyes adjusted to the low light. They had landed in a pasture at the edge of what appeared to be a small village Hermione couldn’t quite recognize. Light from the windows of distant buildings swam through the haze to them, and Harry strode forward towards the source, leaving Hermione scrambling behind him to keep up.

They eventually came into the dimly lit village, the silence of its deserted streets disturbed only by the echoing sounds of their footsteps striking upon the cobbles and the swirling eddies in the fog left in their wake. Something prickled at the back of Hermione’s neck—she _knew_ this place, or felt she ought to recognize it, but could not make out any identifying details through the gloom. She swung her gaze around the quiet streets, and something else bothered her. She had almost forgotten what night this was. “Where are all the children?” she wondered aloud, “They should be out… out trick-or-treating, shouldn’t they? It’s not so late yet.”

Harry did not respond.

The street they followed led them into a widened area—almost certainly the village square. Out of the mist ahead of them, a tall pointed monument loomed, obelisk-like against the night sky. As they neared, it began to transform, and Hermione stopped dead in her tracks, eyes flying wide in recognition. The looming structure had resolved itself into the all-too-familiar silhouette of a statue she knew well—from nearly a decade of pilgrimages to this spot, in what had become a Christmas Eve tradition for the pair since that fateful night so long ago, in the midst of a war, on the run as hunted fugitives; the possibility of a romantic relationship or marriage being the furthest thing from their minds.

“I know this place, Harry…” she whispered, “We’re in Godric’s Hollow! …Is it a good idea to be here tonight?”

Harry shrugged, having approached the statue of his parents and the tiny bundle of a stone version of himself clutched between them, seemingly transfixed. “There’s no danger here. Not anymore.”

“There’s no one else out here, either…”

He shrugged again. “It gets dark early in the north.”

“…That’s not what I meant.” She folded her arms across her chest, feeling a little indignant but mostly cold. Silently, she wished she’d worn more than her night clothes and a bathrobe, but she hadn’t bothered changing since morning.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Harry set off again, away from the statues and towards the hazy outline of the church. Hermione fell in behind him, their footfalls much faster on the well-worn path into the graveyard. They picked their way deftly around rows of headstones and grave markers; the way to the one they sought etched in their minds after so many repeated journeys here in years past. The only difference now was that the paths were devoid of a crisply fallen snow cover and tonight’s atmosphere was thick with fog. Harry moved like a man possessed, despite the limited visibility, and Hermione found herself trailing behind once more, gathering her robe up around her ankles in a futile attempt to keep pace.

She slowed as she caught up with him at his destination, approaching him cautiously from behind. Hermione watched as Harry stood rigidly at attention for several moments, and then seemed to visibly deflate. His head hung down towards his chest and his shoulders slumped, his stature diminishing before her very eyes. She immediately stepped forward, grasped his hand in hers, and squeezed tight.

“It feels so different here… than it does in the winter.” She whispered, following his gaze to look down at the glistening white stone before them.

Harry nodded, saying nothing.

The words carved into the stone were the same as they had ever been, save for one fact that didn’t escape Hermione’s notice. When she read them to herself, scanning the familiar names and the passage from Corinthians, her eyes settled on the final date: now the same as the night she stood there, only twenty-five years in the past. “We’ve never been here on Halloween before,” She squeezed his hand again, and felt him do the same. “Do you feel like telling me what this is about?” A warm exhale escaped her lips and hung in the air before them. The question had weighed on her mind since he’d asked her to accompany him, to trust him, and now it too seemed to hang before them, deathly still in the tyranny of the night.

“There was a murder today.” He spoke softly, still gipping her hand tightly. “A young couple, a mother and a father… the killing curse… they were just gone, and we were the ones called to investigate.”

Hermione felt a shiver run down her spine. “On Halloween night,” she breathed.

“Twenty-five years, to the day.” Harry confirmed. “They had a son… he’s only four.”

“Oh, gods.” She felt her heart drop into her stomach, and leaned against his side, resting her head against his shoulder. “Was he…?”

“Out of the house. At a muggle friend’s place for a Halloween party. The friend’s mother found them when no one came to pick him up. We got the case from Scotland Yard.”

Hermione nodded. She well remembered her time spent crafting the bill that paved the way for closer cooperation and integration between magical and muggle law enforcement. She wondered what that younger version of herself—idealistic, ambitious, certain of the benefits of cooperation between the magical and non-magical worlds on issues of mutual concern, confident in the ways the Statute of Secrecy could be bent but not broken—would have thought about memories of that triumph returning in such a horrifying context. She liked to think she would have been proud that the law worked exactly as designed. Now, though, she just felt sick. “Harry… oh, Harry. I’m so sorry. That must’ve been horrible.”

“It was… it’s so weird. I was operating on just instinct, because I couldn’t stop thinking the entire time that this was _them_. It was so… so similar.”

“Of course you did, no one could blame you for thinking so.”

“I don’t know how to describe it. It felt like I wasn’t really there… like I’d stepped into the past and was watching from outside myself, like I was in that pensieve all over again.”

“That’s why we came here, isn’t it?”

Harry nodded. “I had to see them, tonight. I had to make sure they were still here.” He sighed, and Hermione felt him tense up beneath her, as if steeling himself.

“It’s alright to feel the things that you need to feel.” She murmured, “it’s only me here, it’s alright.”

A choked sob wracked his body, and he shuddered against her. Hermione turned so she could see him, stood up on tiptoes, kissed away the salt on his cheek. “I don’t get it, Hermione. It never gets any easier.”

“What doesn’t? Missing them? The Auror work?”

He was silent for a while, as if searching for the right thing to say. “The time.” He finally said, “The passing of it, and the remembering.”

Hermione frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I used to think that I would always just be sad, remembering my parents, but it’s different now. Now, Halloween comes around, and I’m just… aware of it. I’m aware of the passing of time. It’s been another year, and I can feel it adding up, and it never gets any easier, knowing that another year has passed.”

For a moment, Hermione felt herself forgetting the circumstances of their sojourn and marveling at his answer.

“I’m older now than my parents ever got to be.” He said, eyes flashing as if achieving sudden clarity, “Every Halloween I’m another year older than my parents ever were.”

She settled her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes, her mind spinning furiously through so many potential responses, none of them quite right. Then, as usual when she found herself at a loss for words, she settled on something she had once read. “A poet, Robert Frost I think… he once said something like that.” She paused, remembering, wanting to get it exactly right. “He said that he could sum up everything he knew about life in three words. It goes on.”

Harry leaned his head against the top of hers. “That sounds about right.”

“That’s the funny thing about time, isn’t it?” She continued, emboldened. “It goes on, even when you don’t want it to.”

“Not for them, it doesn’t.” She watched as he dug a divot into the grass at the base of the stone with his foot. “And not for so many others.”

A knot curled in her stomach. She recognized this line of thought. “It’s not your fault, Harry. None of it is.”

“I know,” he muttered, “You’ve said so before.”

“It’s still just as true.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.”

Hermione sighed. “It’s this job, Harry. You’re out there every day, chasing rogue Death Eaters and their sympathizers, investigating these kinds of murders… at some point you have to realize you can’t save everyone.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

“You do so much, Harry. You’ve saved so many already, when we were still just kids.”

He was silent for a long moment, and she felt another shiver race through her. She pulled herself closer to his body, molding herself against his side. “They were so young, Hermione.”

“I know.”

“Just a few years older than us.”

She paused, knitting her brows. “You mean the couple from today?”

“I thought I’d recognize them, from Hogwarts, but I didn’t,” Harry sighed. “They must’ve moved here from somewhere… but they were still so young.”

“You can’t predict the future. All you can do is try and find whoever did this.”

“That’s the thing… I don’t think we need to.”

“It wasn’t Death Eaters?” She couldn’t help the surprise that crept into her voice.

“We did an analysis on both wands we found at the scene. The last two spells performed by the husband’s were both killing curses. It was still in his hands… pointed at himself… held tight.”

This time, the shiver that swept down Hermione’s spine had nothing to do with the cold. “Oh gods…” she whispered, “That poor child.”

“Muggle police already told him his parents aren’t coming back… I don’t know who’s going to tell him his own father’s to blame.”

“You’re sure that’s what happened?”

He nodded. “You almost want it to be a set-up, someone framing him. There’s no evidence for it, though. We’ll follow up, but I have a bad feeling we already know everything we need to know.”

“I’m sorry, Harry… That’s just awful.”

“I don’t understand someone like that. How could you do that—to your own family?”

“It’s not meant to be understood, that kind of thing. It doesn’t come from a rational place.”

“Yeah…” He trailed off, and for a while they stood there, in the dark and the fog and the silence of the surrounding graves, everything around them cold except for each other. “I wish I could know more about them, who they were.”

“You can’t prevent these things, just by knowing more.” She noticed, more than meant, the rueful tinge to her own voice. “Believe me, if accumulating as much information as possible let you predict the future, I would know.”

“It just leaves so many questions.”

“Mmhmm…” She sighed into his neck.

“Do you think she was afraid? Do you think she knew something was coming?”

“What did her wand reveal?”

He shook his head. “Nothing defensive. I don’t think she even had time to get to it.”

Hermione couldn’t help it—her mind wandered, imagining herself in that position, desperate, caught unawares, her own husband turning on her—she shivered again, something she was sure Harry could feel through how tightly she held onto him.

“Do you think they really loved each other, you know, before?”

“Probably, once.” Her stomach was still in knots. She was painfully aware of that morning, when the same had been true, though for entirely different reasons. “Sometimes relationships fall apart, but the people in them stay together.” Once she started, she found she couldn’t stop the words falling from her mouth. “Sometimes people feel trapped, sometimes there’s abuse no one around them can see. Sometimes people move to a new country, hoping the change of scenery will patch over the holes… sometimes it’s a deliberate isolation tactic.”

“You’ve read about this?”

“Yeah, I have.”

She felt him stumble over his next question. “How… how do you bring a child into a situation like that?”

“For the same reason,” she said, a little too quickly, “Some unhappy couples think raising a child will fix everything… it doesn’t.”

Another long period of silence fell across them, punctuated finally by Harry, who shifted deliberately from one foot to the other, as if uncomfortable. “We defeated Voldemort, Hermione.”

“I remember.”

“We defeated him, and there’s still so much evil left, so many pieces left behind for us to pick up.”

“There’s always going to be evil, Harry. You can’t fix that by yourself, no one can.”

He barreled ahead, voice picking up tempo, as if he hadn’t heard her. “It’s not just our world… it’s the muggles too. There’s murders like this almost every day, conflicts everywhere… the Prime Minister followed the Americans into two wars in the Middle East, and for what?”

“Harry?” She cocked an eyebrow, but he paid her little heed.

“And the news, they’re talking about something called Global Warming? Muggle scientists are worried about a new era of mass extinctions, and the oceans rising, and this is all something they’ve done without our help! The world is changing just from muggle influence and—and… technology alone, and we’ve barely even started the kinds of communication between our worlds that could let us help them, and even that modest progress is being fought every day in the Wizen—“

“Harry!” She almost shouted, and he fell silent. Her head felt as if it were spinning. She appreciated how devoted Harry was to keeping abreast of the news in the non-magical world, as was she. It was a habit they’d picked up together when they both first started advocating for greater integration between worlds, and both had found it helped them with their jobs, but she could easily recognize the signs of Harry beginning to spiral. She shook her head. “It’s not your responsibility to fix the whole world.”

“It just doesn’t feel like a good world, like a safe world.”

At first, Hermione didn’t quite know what to say to that. These were the same worries she had herself from time to time, although she tried not to give in and wallow in them too often. She was grateful for the moment to simply think, even in the oppressive stillness of the empty graveyard, and as she thought about the chill and the omnipresent specter of death that surrounded them, an idea came to her. “Harry, let me show you something.”

He stilled. “Show me something? Something here?”

She shook her head. “No, somewhere else.”

“Where?”

Her mind immediately flashed back to earlier that evening, and she couldn’t avoid her response. “You’re going to have to trust me.”

“Of course… Of course I do, to the ends of the earth.”

A wry smile crept over her face, unbidden; she knew then that both their minds were on the same moment, united. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, and allowed happy memories to wash over her. She pulled Harry tight against her chest, pictured her destination in her mind’s eye, felt her magic tightening around them both, and in the next instant they were gone, leaving Godric’s Hollow and its graveyard behind—left to the stillness and the silence of the fog and the night.

***

They appeared behind a copse of spindly trees, next to a high-sided fence. The mist was gone, as was much of the chill in the air. Layers of dried fallen leaves crunched beneath their feet, driven in gently undulating piles against the base of the fence. A gentle breeze carried the sound of distant children, laughing and shouting, over the tops of the trees. Hermione smiled. She had landed them in exactly the right spot.

“This way, come on.” She held onto Harry’s hand as she separated herself from him, peering around the side of one of the trees and pulling him out into the open. Her pace increased as she crossed the leaf-strewn ground, her heart thudding against her chest.

“Hermione, where are we going?” He called, stumbling as he followed along behind her.

“You’ll see,” She didn’t bother even looking back as they reached a paved pathway, one which looped through the wood behind them and curved around a low tree-lined hill just ahead. They passed around the bend in the path and through a set of wrought iron gates, sitting open, and a rush of light from so many streetlamps welcomed them to a street teeming with life.

They stopped near the edge of the road, and as they stood, a gaggle of tiny ghosts, vampires, werewolves, superheroes, and one ballerina rushed past, giggling and clutching bright orange treat buckets and sacks bulging with evidence of their collected bounty. They watched as this group ran to the other side of the street and up to a squat little house, windows bathed in warm light, and gathered in a chattering swarm around the front door. Excited peals of laughter, the sound of a ringing doorbell, and squeals of delight as the door opened carried through the fall air to reach their ears. This residential scene repeated itself up and down the street, with other groups of similarly adorned older children, younger ones escorted by beaming adults, and infants in bumblebee and teddy bear onesies, dozing in the arms of their parents, all roaming from house to house, enjoying the waning moments of a late Halloween evening. “Where are we?” Harry breathed.

Hermione watched his face change as he took in the scene before him. “I grew up here. This was my neighborhood when I was a girl.” She gestured towards a sign near the gates behind them, “My parents used to take me for picnics in this park, right on top of that hill, beneath the trees.”

“’Mione, I’ve been to your parents’ house. I don’t recognize this area at all.”

She shook her head, “When I brought them home from Australia, we had to find them a new house. They wanted to live closer to my flat, and this area was full of younger families again.”

Another handful of screaming costumed children ran past them, as if to emphasize her point. Harry shook his head. “I’ve never seen this many kids out trick-or-treating. Especially not on Privet Drive.”

They started walking down the sidewalk, Hermione once again leading, but slower now, almost meditative. “For some reason, a lot of American ex-pats who work in London settled in this neighborhood with their families. Mum and dad used to say it was good for business, because their insurance always paid more for private dental care, much better than rates under the NHS.” Ahead of them, she spied a bench at the edge of the park, and strode towards it. “I guess that means there are a lot more children trick-or-treating here than elsewhere in London. When I was growing up, it just seemed normal.” She sat down on the bench, carefully arranging the rear hem of her bathrobe as a barrier between her and the cold surface.

She looked up at Harry and patted the space next to her, expecting him to sit. To her surprise, he first sat, then swung one, and then both legs up onto the bench, turned sideways, and leaned back until his head rested in her lap. Blinking, he looked up at her from below, and she gazed back, a soft smile crossing her face. “Hi,” he said.

She brushed an errant lock of hair away from his eyes. “Hi.”

“Thank you for coming with me, tonight.” He turned his head over, pressing his cheek against her thigh and gazing out across the street. “You must’ve thought I’d gone mad when I asked you, but I don’t know how I would’ve coped going alone.”

“There was never any chance that I wouldn’t come with you.” She closed her eyes and nodded as she said the words, absentmindedly beginning to run her fingers through his hair. “I saw it in your eyes, in that moment, that you needed me. And besides, we’re a team. Always have been.”

“Still… it’s not like me to… to lose my grip like that.”

“It’s like I sad before. You have to let yourself feel the things that you’re feeling.” Slowly, she leaned her head back against the rear of the bench, letting it rest there and letting herself bask in the sounds and the smells of her old neighborhood and the feel of her Harry against her lap.

They sat for a while, saying nothing. Hermione’s fingertips traced rivulets and swirls through his hair, danced across his scalp, brushed up against the faded outline of his old scar. Around them, the hubbub of the evening started to die down as children returned to their homes, warmed with the promise of sweets and good cheer. Gradually, the night became still once more. When he next spoke, it was with a whisper. “Hermione?”

“Hm?”

“Why did you bring me here?”

She opened her eyes, looked back out over the slowly emptying street, and furrowed her brow. “I guess the honest answer is… I don’t really know.”

“You don’t?”

“Well…” She took a moment to recall back to the graveyard, to re-acquaint her mind with the cold and the fog, the eerie stillness and the silence punctuated only by Harry, giving voice to his fears. “Yes and no. It’s hard to explain, Harry. It was more of a feeling—an instinct, really. Like this was where we needed to be.”

“Your old neighborhood?”

She nodded. “So many of my memories are here. I thought… no, I felt… maybe, I could bring you here to see it. I wanted you to see this place and feel the way I do, when I remember it.”

“And what is that?”

“That the world isn’t so evil… that the world isn’t so unsafe.” She felt him shift slightly in her lap, and she resumed her stroking, realizing her hands had stilled, unbidden. When he didn’t respond, she tried a different tack. “Sometimes, having as much information as possible isn’t good for us. Yes, we should always remember there are places where there are still wars, and there are places with rising sea levels and melting ice caps and everything else, but there are also places where kids get to run around freely on Halloween night, without fear. There are still places where fathers and mothers take their little girls to the park for picnics.” She began to settle into a rhythm, with both her voice and her hands, as the words started to fall more clearly into place. “We have to take the world as it is… because not all that long ago, with Voldemort, there weren’t many places like this, not here at least.”

“I don’t think I ever had a place like that, not before Hogwarts.”

“I’m so sorry, Harry.”

“I know Godric’s Hollow must’ve been like that, once. I thought… I thought maybe, it could be like that again…” from the way he trailed off, Hermione sensed there was a ‘_but…_’ coming at the end of his statement, but decided to let him find it on his own. She continued to toy with his hair while he searched for his words. “I don’t think it can be… not anymore. There’s really nothing left for me there, is there?”

“I wouldn’t say there’s nothing… but I don’t think there are any answers left there. I think we found all those a long time ago, that Christmas Eve.”

“A lifetime ago.”

Despite the gravity of their conversation, Hermione found herself smiling again. “It does seem that way, sometimes.”

“Do you think they were scared, Hermione?”

She paused for a moment, unsure of where the new direction he was taking their talk led. “Who?”

“My parents. Do you think they were scared, you know, when they realized they were going to have me?”

Recognition alit behind her eyes. Somehow, she couldn’t quite explain why, the gnawing sense that this question, or some form of it, had been the one dancing around his head—underlying everything else he’d asked her that night—struck her. It was one she could, thankfully, answer more personally than most. “I think every future parent is scared, once they realize they’re going to be having a child, at least on some level.”

“No, I mean… it’s just that they were so young, Hermione. I don’t think I ever really appreciated it before I was their age, but that’s just it. They were, what, twenty when I was born? They would’ve been nineteen when they found out. Two years out of Hogwarts, newly married, in the middle of a war, and they find out they’re going to be parents. I mean, fuck! How do you do that? How could they have done it without being terrified?”

“I’m sure they were,” the familiar uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach was back again, “But they did it anyway, Harry. They did it out of love.”

“This was before anyone even knew about the Horcruxes… this was before anyone knew Voldemort could be defeated. They were just kids, Hermione. They were just two scared kids in the middle of an unwinnable war.”

“Two scared kids who loved each other.” She suddenly lit upon an idea, and she grasped Harry’s head, turning it back back so she could look straight down into his bright, green eyes. “They were two scared kids who loved each other enough to make it work. Sometimes, that’s all you need. And isn’t that what we were? All those months in the tent, especially when we thought we’d lost Ron for good, and when we didn’t know how we’d ever get the sword? Just two scared kids in the middle of an unwinnable war—two scared kids who loved each other enough to make it work.” She was smiling down at him, though there were tears brimming at the edges of her eyes, and for the life of her she felt she couldn’t quite explain why.

He reached for her, cupped her cheek in one hand, and brushed a fingertip across it, just beneath her eye. It came away sparkling. “I’m sorry, Hermione, I didn’t mean to—“

“There’s no need to apologize.” She said quickly, reflexively reaching up as well to wipe at her own eyes. “Harry, I don’t think you should believe for a single second that your parents didn’t know exactly what they were getting into when your mother found out she was pregnant. I don’t think you should ever believe that they weren’t… just, absolutely clear-eyed and certain about what they wanted, and what they wanted was you. Yes, they must’ve been terrified. Yes, they must have known the world wasn’t a very good one to bring a child into. But they were willing to do whatever they could to fight to make it a better place—a better place for their son.”

With his hand, he maintained his place on her cheek, gently caressing her skin. She leaned her head into his touch, and a warmth seemed to seep from his fingers and straight into her. “There are times when I wonder what I ever did to deserve you, Hermione”

She smiled wanly, but shook her head. “They were so brave, Harry. Remember that. It was so brave, bringing you into the world.” She laid a hand across his, holding it tight against her cheek. “You don’t know how grateful I am for them.”

There were tears now in his eyes, too. “I love you so much, Hermione.”

“And I love you, Harry. You know that—but you, when you came home tonight… oh, I was so worried. Especially when you said you couldn’t be in our flat—I didn’t understand. But now, I think… I think I figured out what this is all about.” She paused, took a deep breath, steeled herself. “Harry, the world is never going to feel like the perfect place to raise a child. It wouldn’t have back then, and it won’t now.”

Her husband’s breath seemed to catch in his throat, before he let it go in one long, drawn-out note, nearly a whistle. “How did you know?”

From above, she gazed at him, taking careful note of how intimately close his head lay to her stomach, wherein a tiny assemblage of cells—surely no bigger now than than a common garden pea—was rapidly subdividing in an intricate process as old as time immemorial, one that would would eventually yield for her her firstborn child. She thought back to the week of uncertainty that had preceded this moment, all the books she had read, all the spells she had tried, everything she had done with increasing fanaticism up until that very morning to ensure her own certainty. She tried not to reminisce on how many of those hours she had spent preoccupied with those very same worries; on how much time she’d lain awake, struggling in silence over her own uncertainty about the world and their situation; on the simple liberation of finally having done enough tests, finally knowing _something_ for certain, finally being able to plan instead of worry. “Just a lucky guess,” she said.

“A lucky guess…?” He repeated, a questioning lilt to his voice. Maybe he’d taken notice of her pause and guessed at some of the myriad thoughts that had besieged her in that brief span of time.

“This is what I think,” she chose her words carefully, slowly, mulling each over, “You experienced something very traumatic today. I think you were taken by that child, by his helplessness, by his fear, by the way his world came down around him. I think part of you saw yourself in him, certainly—saw your own experience of losing your parents in his eyes. But even then, at four, he’s a little old for that… his situation would be so different. I think… I think most of you saw something else. I think you saw your own son in him, saw a future child of ours left terribly alone by horrendous circumstance.” From below, Harry stared at her, something akin to awe in his eyes. The same prickling sensation at her neck as before let her know she must have been right. “Not only that, but… I think you’ve been wondering about… about things of that nature for a lot longer than you’ve chosen to let on.”

A low sigh escaped him, and he shifted slightly, pressing his cheek up further against her abdomen. “It’s never any use, hiding things from you…” She gave him a small smile. “Although I don’t think I was really trying to hide it… but, yes. I admit, I’ve been thinking a lot about kids, lately. And this… it just shook me. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“What happens to him now? What happens to that little boy?”

“We’re still working on some details… but he’ll go to live with his grandparents, with his mother’s parents, I mean.”

“You’ve done the best you can for him.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s all you can do… that’s all any of us can do.”

“I know.” He closed his eyes.

“We can’t predict the future, Harry.” Her heart felt full, as if near to bursting. “All we can do is plan for it, and work as hard as we can at solving the things we can solve. All we can do is the best we can… but the important part is we get to do it together, because we’re a team. We always will be.”

“Ok.” He nodded, once.

“Ok, what?”

“I mean Ok, I think I get it, now. I think I understand.”

“So tell me.”

He opened his eyes again, looked up at her; she beamed back down at him. “What?”

“I know you, Harry. I know you pretty well, and I know there’s something you’ve been wanting to tell me, and I think I know what it is. So tell me. Tell me what it is you understand.”

He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I think… no, I know… we’re ready. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, like I said, and… and I want to start trying to have a child. I want to have a family, with you.” Halting, faltering, stammering, sincere—it was not unlike his proposal, some years ago.

Hermione smiled, her chest light. For the first time that day, it finally felt like the perfect moment. “Well, you know what, Harry? I think I’ve got some good news for you.”

***


End file.
